This project was intended to replace the one built in the 1970s. “President Service” building on the site surrounded on three sides by the “Mirax-Plaza” complex. The presidential service has already moved to a new building, and at this place it was planned to build another office part of the "plaza" - by order of the same "Mirax". The project was chosen for a long time - a year and a half for sure, among the early proposals there were even two towers, similar to the "plaza" skyscrapers. In this case, a glass forest, a mini-City, would probably have grown at the corner of Kutuzovka and the Third Ring. But this did not happen, the two final projects were done by Alexander Asadov and Nikolai Lyzlov, and the final one (at the moment when the crisis stopped the plans of Mirax) was the project of Nikolai Lyzlov.
The building that was supposed to replace the President Service is a simple and large parallelepiped with a large courtyard. Outside, it is covered with a silvery metal mesh, which Nikolai Lyzlov, but by his own admission, "spied" on the building of the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin, built by Rem Koolhaas. The mesh is fine and, despite some transparency, it makes the facade completely closed, "wrapped". Which is a bit like the effect of the green grid that houses are drawn in during renovation - you can see that there is something inside, but it is not very clear what.
Three walls facing the buildings of Mirax Plaza are completely tightened and become a completely neutral background for the more active stone facades of Sergei Kiselev. On the fourth - the only free one, which faces Kulneva Street and therefore plays the role of a front door - asymmetric rectangular openings appear in the mesh "skin". There are few of them, most of them are recesses, but there are two shiny glass ledges-screen. Instead of one texture, three are obtained: mesh, failure, protrusion. All together it resembles a game of "sea battle" increased many times over, where the role of cells is played by the joints of mesh plates. The smallest "ship" is a one-cell hole (one floor high), the largest is four by four. At the bottom, several cells merge into a horizontal line and form the slots of the entrances. They give an idea of the scale of the building, which, hanging over the gap of the entrance, seems to be completely cyclopean. The building is a giant bundle. And is there something wrapped in it?
That's right, the main thing here is inside. Inside there is a huge atrium, an interior that Nikolai Lyzlov calls nothing other than "Piranesian". I must say that two familiar words - "atrium" and "interior", do not fit this space at all. But the "Piranesian" - fits perfectly. A perfectly fair definition - an effect similar to Piranesi's fantastic engravings is certainly present here. It is important that it was sought, apparently, purposefully - and as a result, it is especially interesting to observe what this frighteningly romantic image is composed of within the framework of minimalist modernist architecture.
First of all, it is, of course, size. Inside - not like outside, there is no grid here, all 16 floors are there, drawn by rows of loggias. Such an atrium is no longer an atrium, but a covered square, a piece of the city curled up like a snail inside itself. In principle, for modern Moscow, 16 floors is almost the norm. But this is in the case when they are placed with mushrooms and plates around the city, when you can look at them from afar, and when you come closer, you are only interested in the entrance. It doesn't work that way here - because the space is collapsed and blocked from above, its scale is concentrated and forces itself to be respected. Because the space with the ceiling, we are still accustomed to consider the interior, but for the interior it is huge. The "ceiling" is lined with deep concrete ribs into cells - the size of that way 8 by 8 meters each - in each such cell it could easily fit quite a decent living room.
The Cyclopean roof is supported by three equally large round pillars, each three meters in diameter - however, with a 16-storey height, they still turn out to be not thick, and even slender. The supports are lined up, which is why for some reason there is an association with lampposts - then it becomes clear how big they are. But the strongest trick, in my opinion, is that two pillars are partially "recessed" in the office floors. Something like a seven-story rectangular hive is attached to one of them - the house is strung directly on a pole and hangs on it. It turns out a house strung on a large pillar and surrounded by a city - a city within a city. The lower part of another pillar is recessed in a mass of floors, which diagonally, like an amphitheater, expand downward, reclaiming additional space from the atrium.
The gigantic, closed and cellular space was supposed to be impressive - I want the house to be built at least in order to get inside and feel how it is. However, there are also enough drawings - moreover, in the graphic form the project even acquires an additional, actually "Piranesian" charm (remember that we also know Piranesi primarily in the form of engravings). In any case, it is obvious that this project, although it was made with the expectation of implementation, is quite capable of existing in a virtual form - it has a rather large "paper", and therefore substantial potential.
First, the new building is completely different from the surrounding buildings of the Mirax Plaza by Sergei Kiselev - which, according to Nikolai Lyzlov, suited the authors of both projects. It is even to some extent opposite to the "plaza" - in such a neighborhood it would look almost like a palace, despite the intelligent modesty of Kiselev's project by the standards of last year's Moscow. That is, if Mirax Plaza is a restrained project, then this one, which has taken root in his yard, is completely minimalist. He, like many other projects of Nikolai Lyzlov, looks like a declaration of minimalism. But not only.
Secondly: the project is very similar to the seventies building "President-Service" (which is easy to see, since the latter has not yet been disassembled). It is the same rectangular, with the same courtyard, with the same striped windows. True, the new building in the project is larger, the courtyard is covered with a roof, and the windows have been replaced with balconies, which are also covered with a net outside, but the continuity is felt. Even without knowing that Nikolai Lyzlov is a sincere admirer and connoisseur of 1970s architecture, but just looking at the project, one might think that the architect decided to build his honest successor on the site of President-Service.
The space of the atrium can even be interpreted as a plastic reflection on the theme of modernist architecture and the modern city - this covered courtyard is like a piece of street taken "separately", compressed, enlarged - hence the emotions. To some extent, this is a performance - the comparison of architecture with theater is terribly worn out, but in this case (unlike many others) it is appropriate. Moreover, the play is clearly about a modernist city, and the author, as it were, even makes one of the heroes of the work one of the heroes of the work (maybe even the main one), which is characteristic of dystopian horror. In any case, if not a play, then an architectural fantasy. Which brings us back from modernism to Piranesi.
The third and, in my opinion, the main feature of the project is a kind of latent (that is, hidden) classicism. The elephant legs of the round pillars can resemble columns, the cells of the ceiling are caissons, and the balconies descending in steps from the southern end are an amphitheater. Of course, all this very vaguely resembles prototypes (if any), but this, by the way, only sharpens the impression. Because the pipe for communications and the atrium beams can be of any size, but a 16-storey column or a caisson with an area of / u200b / u200bthe average living room is overwhelming.
Here I would like to remember two things. That the architecture of the 1970s loved by Nikolai Lyzlov developed from minimalism and brutalism to a very peculiar, but classicism. For example, similar square caissons (only noticeably smaller in size) can be found in the pavilion of the Lenin steam locomotive, built by Leonid Pavlov.
And also - that the Russian avant-garde in the late 1920s was engaged in geometric purification and rethinking of classical forms. Small elements grew and abstracted to complete (or almost complete) unrecognizability, revealing their geometric nature.
It seems to me that something similar happens in this project of Nikolai Lyzlov - an application for movement to some side where the shadow of the columns falls. True, it is not the image of the temple or the shape of the column that is rethought here, but the romantic spirit of Piranesi's engravings. Which, in fact, turn out to be even very close to modern architecture.
